Sunday, February 26, 2012

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,And times and things, as in that vision, seemKeeping along it their eternal stands,—Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bandsThat roamed through the young world, the glory extremeOf high Sesostris, and that southern beam,The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,

'Twixt villages, and think how we shall takeOur own calm journey on for human sake.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Shakespeare Tavern: Moved to the corner of Williams and Duane near five points and city hall after the tavern was dismantled in 1836. Run by Robert Anderson in directory of 1842 and in 1848 a meeting place for German immigrants and refugees of the 1848 revolutions in europe. Still in operation in 1860. Image from NYPL Digital Images Collection

"He looked at the cowrie, “Awright, may you come and get it, may you na’,” he threw his arm back, slung it far as he could toward the shore; and as the ship’s wake passed over that little holy land cowrie, as it drifted into the deep sediment off the far branches of the Hudson River, deep pockets of mud, layers from the early peoples, from the land animals, ancient things down there, more ancient than the name of our lord, deep brine of the beginning. So too like all before it, the little cowrie reached the mud and stuck, forever swallowed and no amount of hope from a twenty-two-year-old would be able to resurrect it."

Sunday, February 12, 2012

flâneuse or places ... wicked choice. Paris, well then it would have to be the contrary flâneuse, but Dickens' London, although city and dss chapter, is not Paris and shares cityspace and citylit. Space and lit places. The coin comes up for places along the way, a distinctly odd blog where Mountainair rubs shoulders with world cities, real cities with imagined ones...

Sam Anderson on Asad Raza in the New York Times:

A few words about Asad, who appears in the essay only as a shadowy figure: my anonymous "friend." In reality, he was a huge part of my trip: driver, companion, interpreter, guinea pig, canary in the coal mine. Asad and I met 10 years ago in grad school, where I found him to be so intimidatingly smart, so effortlessly fluent about esoteric subjects that I’d never even heard of, that I almost dropped out of the program after two weeks. I stuck with it, though, and eventually Asad and I became friends. He's still the most naturally critical person I know - not in the narrow sense of being negative about things, but in the large and exciting sense of taking things apart, analyzing them, concocting theories. Walking around with him feels like carrying a philosopher in your pocket.

Because we studied Dickens together at school, and because Asad lives in London now, it seemed only natural for me to bully him into coming to Dickens World. He agreed and, true to form, kept up a brilliant running commentary about everything we saw.

In my favorite picture from the trip, Asad stands on top of a very high railing in order to peer ecstatically over the wall of Miss Havisham's garden, still discoursing.

Asad was on fire, interpretively, for the entire trip. Only Dickens World, it turned out, could make his critical motor grind to a halt. As soon as we entered the park, it was like he’d been shot by an arrow. You could feel the energy draining out of him.